true facts about death
- If people did not decompose, we'd be standing on a layer of bodies 14 metres thick.
- People do decompose, of course, but their atoms are merely recycled, so that we are constantly breathing the lives that lived before us.
- After death, the corpse actually increases in temperature, sometimes hot enough to fry an egg or toast bread.
- The ancient Welsh tribe of Llythmmgog tried to bury their dead in the sky by throwing them from the top of a tree.
- In modern-day America, more coffins are sold each year than tubes of lubricant.
- Lenin, who lies embalmed in Moscow, is not actually dead at all. A Duracell battery inserted in his anus maintains his organism at the most basic level.
- Kerry Katona is clinically brain dead. She is animated by invisible wires manipulated by publicist Max Clifford.
- In pre-Conquest central American societies, tribes were able to cheat death by chewing a combination of leaves called Kaaleth. The most famous example was a tribal king who fell from a mountain and continued to live as a kind of giblet soup.
- One anagram of 'death' is 'thead', which coincidentally in the Hopi word for 'getting one's foreskin caught between the dagger and the stone.'
- Fewer people die each year in the north of England than in the south. They manage this out of sheer bloody-mindedness.
- Drinking a cocktail of bleach, anitfreeze and aspirin will not necessarily kill you, but it will put you in a coma until all of your friends are dead of natural causes.
- DJ's on local radio and Virgin FM have IQs lower than that of a butterfly. I wish they were dead.
(frankspencer, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 14:45, 58 replies)

O hail the great fountain of bloody knowledge...
I almost believed you until I got to fact number 6.
( girlinthehole, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 14:53, closed)

I want
the welsh tribe one to be true.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 14:58, closed)

Whahhhhhh
Theres a 33% chance that life is merely the virtual construct of an advanced being/race.

Theres a 33% chance that the advanced being in question is none other than Toadfish Rebecchi.
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 14:59, closed)

I can personally vouch for Nr 10
.. 'tis true.

Southern Jessies.. ;)
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 14:59, closed)

I've had that cocktail.
They were flogging it on a ski-trip to Romania. The barman seemed to think he could dip my pockets after I started to doze off in the corner, cheeky fucker.

A quick pick-me-up of honey, lemon and goats p!ss had me right as rain within 15 minutes the next morning.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:13, closed)

Erm
the bit about the atoms being recycled - that's true....we live in a finite world - all the atoms that exist now have always existed but not necessarily in the same composition.

I'm sure I'm not explaining this very well...but I thought that it wasn't possible to create matter out of nothing - therefore when we die we simply change state - well our bodies do...being carbon based as we are. As far as our minds or our thoughts are concerned...god knows where they go to.

*Awaits bigger brains to point out where this argument is entirely wrong.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:16, closed)

^^^
Tis true indeed, atoms simply bind to each other in different ways to make different things but are neither created nor destroyed.

Of course that isn't true when you start looking at nuclear reactions though.

But very few people suffer them.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:19, closed)

^^
This is recycling at sub-atomic level. Absolutely everything in the world has been recycled over and over again.
( girlinthehole, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:23, closed)

Hmmmm
put like that, should we not be getting charged 5p for breathing in marks and spencer?
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:27, closed)

"Absolutely everything in the world has been recycled over and over again."
erm... sure?

How about the Magma in the centre of the world... has that not "always" been Magma?

I don't think for a moment that it was once Air...

*takes pedant hat off and starts to think about wanking again*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:30, closed)

to put it more poetically
We may be breathing -or even composed of - the same atoms that made up da Vinci, Socrates, Monroe or Shakespeare.

Or Stalin.
(frankspencer, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:31, closed)

@Humpty
Presumably at some stage before it was magma it was part of a star, or maybe even another planet?

*takes off larger pedant hat and thinks about wanking*
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:33, closed)

Surely
the magma at the center of the earth was once hydrogen, in a star somewhere, until it went supernova?

*Damn, pipped to the post!
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:34, closed)

@ al the geordie (and Kaol)
... how does "a Star or planet" qualify to be a part of "this world".

*replaces Al's pedant hat with a dunce's hat, and has a wank*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:35, closed)

@Humpty
Just realised, isn't the "magma at the centre of the earth" in fact not magma at all, but solid iron or something?

*hat-related statement*
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:37, closed)

also
Surely the atoms that made up Shakespeare et al are still in the box he was buried in. Unless they cremated him and dropped him from a crop duster over London.
(frankspencer, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:38, closed)

well...
At no stage was it suggested that things in "this world" had only be recycled in "this world". Therefore the recycling of a "star" or "planet" into "magma" means I have lost interest in the original point of this debate.

*thinks there are too many quotation marks*
*applies gold star to bell end and has another wank*
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:39, closed)

@ Kaol
How dare you interrupt my wank!!

Solid? More likely to be liquid, and incredibly dense. Plutonium? Hmm... time to Look it up I feel.

EDIT... due to estimated pressure of 3million atmospheres, the core is indeed solid., even at the 6000°C temperatures it has.
Fashkinating.

*Apologises for length of hat-related comment comment*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:40, closed)

We're all stardust
A long, long time ago in a conservatory far, far away, young PJM was on the receiving end of the following ganja fuelled explaination of the universe from an astrophysics studying friend:

"There is the theory that all matter in the universe was created in the "Big Bang", which mainly consisted of matter in its most basic form.

As this matter - duly obeying the laws of gravity - began to attract like minded matter, which coalesced into denser patches of matter similar to what we would today call "nebulae".

Over the billions of years, the first generation nebulae condensed into stars, gigantic nuclear fusion reactors which basically convert Hydrogen gas into Helium and other elements. Once these stars exhausted their hydrogen and either became supernovae or simply died, the resulting heavier elements were discharged into the universe prior to coalescing again into new stars and planets. Ad infinitum for 15-25bn years.

All of the various exotic atoms which make up your body were once part of an exploding star. Makes you think doesn't it?"

Like, er, wow and far out man.

That whining old slappy Moby might have been right all along with "Stars".

*scuttles off to drink coffee and think about kittens*
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:43, closed)

@ Humpty
Well, I'd give you a hand, but I don't like where this is going...

I think it's iron anyway.

*puts on hard-hat for inevitable fall-out*
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:44, closed)

Like woah.
You're sooo connected with the world man, that's like, amazing.

Iron-Nickel Alloy Kaol... and you were right about the soildity... see edit of previous "reply"

*approaches billy-mill roundabout*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:44, closed)

*lowers the intellectual tone*
Actually, I was made out of sugar and spice and all things nice. So there!
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:48, closed)

heavier elements
The elements up to and including Iron got created in stars, since Iron is the most stable of atoms, hence you can gain energy from the burning of hydrogen to form helium, and the burning of helium to form, whatever it is the helium star cores create. I can no longer remember what you do to create larger atoms than iron, but I remember it being more interesting than fourier transforms in nuclear magnetic resonance.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:48, closed)

I made an Atom
Out of Lego once.

And a mööse once bit my sister.

Mööse bites can be pretti nastii.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:49, closed)

I like kittens
They are very fluffy.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:51, closed)

I like kittens too
:)
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:53, closed)

i like kittens too
can you recycle old kittens to make new ones?
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:53, closed)

@ Al
I think you get bigger-than-iron atoms when the star goes supernova.

And for the record, TheWeeWitch, I am not made of frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails.
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:53, closed)

Kaol
that's what they all say....
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:54, closed)

All of this talk...
... is making me horny.

Dammit... we've come full circle...

*starts to imagine Maggie thatcher naked*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:56, closed)

Well...
Maybe frogs, but that's where I draw the line.
Frogs and bacon and vodka. But I'm afraid that doesn't fit the verse.
*thumbs down*
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:56, closed)

Hmmm....
All this talk of magma and smegma...

But what about our thoughts? Where do they go? I'm quite happy with the idea that we are constantly recycled - even Shakespeare - as different organisms will have been part of the decomposition process and they in turn will have been broken down when they popped their little metaphorical clogs and possibly ended up in a carrot which I've just eaten.

But where are his ideas? What happens to our thoughts when we die? They're all energy...so where do they go?
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:58, closed)

Kaol is right
The more exotic elements can only be formed by stars - or more accurately the death of stars (but not "death stars". That would be just silly). There is a steady stream of ionized helium (solar wind) from stars as the lighter elements are capable of escaping from the intense gravity of a star.

Heavier elements will only escape once the star gets to the point where it either turns supernovae (ie exhausts it's inner hydrogen fuel and basically blows itself apart), turns nova (not quite big enough to blow itself apart, so implodes and sprays its innards everywhere).

I still like kittens.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 3 Mar 2008, 15:59, closed)

Chickenlady
You're getting into existentialism and probably quantum mechanics too. The power of the human brain is beyond what we'd expect if it were created from mere matter alone, so there is a theory that the human mind exists on a quantum level and thus the essence of the human soul may still continue to exist once the brain itself has turned to dust.

ie Shakespeare may be working on new sonnets but is absolutely fuckered when it comes to scribbling them down.

*edit - Shakespeare probably does like kittens very much. I know I do. They are fluffy*
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:03, closed)

but
does he like kittens?
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:04, closed)

Chickenlady...
Our energies,(or souls), as some people call them floats up up and away to heaven and we become one big ball of energy which is God.

Duh!
( girlinthehole, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:05, closed)

centre of the Earth
What if it's a gigantic, solid kitten?
(frankspencer, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:07, closed)

FS
How ironic would it be if God were a gigantic fluffy kitten?

Actually, that might explain a lot.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:08, closed)

@frankspencer
A gigantic iron kitten?
Sounds like a plot for a shitty hand-held monster/disaster film.

What would it eat?
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:09, closed)

No kittens involved
I remember reading (probably in one of those 'by the porcelain throne' type books) that every time you take a breath, that lungful will include a molecule that was once breathed by Socrates.

I thought that was rubbish until I started muttering in Greek and craving Hemlock.
(osok Rebel without a clue, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:09, closed)

dammit too slow at posting @PJM
would it be ironic? I'm still not certain on the definiation of irony, I just know alanis morisette was wrong.

if you compressed enough kittens, would you make a star?
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:10, closed)

Giant Iron Kittens
could eat the giant iron mice intent on invading new york for it's supplies of iron cheese. a case of what originally appeared to be teh agressor turning out to be our saviour. It would have to be a fluffy kitten.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:14, closed)

That plays right into
the kitten/God theory...
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:15, closed)

omnipotent?
as in never being able to achieve an erection.

*is glad to have brought the subject back to nobs*
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:20, closed)

@ Al
surely by that logic it would be ALWAYS having an erection?
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:22, closed)

@Kaol
yes this is almost certainly true, but onimpotent sounds a bit like impotent which is where I was going with it.

*feels embarrassed about poor nob joke*
(Bazongaloid, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:24, closed)

i love kittens so much..
I have been known to shoot 30 in one morning.

of the ones who brains haven't been totally blasted away I then take them home and, whilst they are still semi alive, i then cut their throats and smear their blood in the shape of a pentagram on my kitchen floor. i then skin the fuckers, toss the furs aside, and wank over the sinewy corpses in the middle of the pentagram whilst offering my wholeness to satan. After unloading in the skulls, I bathe in the now congealed blood of the kittens whilst wearing a g string and quoting lines from Adrian Mole's number one best seller novel 'LO! The Flat Hills Of My Homeland'. I usually finish by watching 'doctors' after the bbc lunchtime news, by which time its off to pick up the kids from school.
(CaptainFellatioNelson is trying to kill me, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:32, closed)

This conversation....
... Definitely needs more cowbell.

EDIT: and less Barnes. For he is a tallentless tit trying to emulate others. And failing. *clicks Ignore*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 3 Mar 2008, 16:58, closed)

That was a fairly
meaty chain of replies.
Wonder if 50-odd is some kind of record.
Anyway... I should go home, this QOTW has actually been decent today for wasting time.
( Cawl, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 17:31, closed)

Magma
@HumptyDumptyWasPushed, waaaaaaay up near the top:

An atom of magma hasn't necessarily been magma since the Earth was formed - it's part of the rock cycle, which is similar to the hydrologic cycle just on a much slower timescale.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_cycle
So if a volcano erupts today, the lava it spews out may have been a dinosaur's granite doorstop...er, if dinosaur's had doors, that is.
(chase, Mon 3 Mar 2008, 21:19, closed)

@ Chase
that's what I learned in geology......all part of the rock cycle.


About the American one (#5), of course more coffins are sold than tubes of lube.....that is because everyone knows that good lube comes in a bottle, not a tube.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Tue 4 Mar 2008, 1:17, closed)

I never Ever thought ...
.... that this QOTW would become interesting and informative.

Thanks to Frank and every other bored soul. Funny how Frank's posts attract intelligent people no? I wonder why that is.... Theories? (we've got 3 days to kill)
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Tue 4 Mar 2008, 6:37, closed)

^ ^
that link is interesting.

But I think it might be more along the lines of intelligence preferring intelligence over stupidity

or it could be the kittens
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Wed 5 Mar 2008, 0:11, closed)

Sorry I'm late...
...I haven't missed anything have I?
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 13:42, closed)

Ahem
*Adopts voice of Catherine Tate's shirty gran character*

Worra loada shit!!!
(tinypod will never learn. Ever., Thu 6 Mar 2008, 7:10, closed)